Document generated on 09/30/2021 8:01 p.m. Canadian University Music Review Revue de musique des universités canadiennes John Beckwith. Music Papers: Articles and Talks by a Canadian Composer, 1961–1994. Ottawa: The Golden Dog Press, 1997. xiii, 256 pp. ISBN 0-919614-72-8 (paperback) Glenn Colton Volume 19, Number 1, 1998 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1014609ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1014609ar See table of contents Publisher(s) Canadian University Music Society / Société de musique des universités canadiennes ISSN 0710-0353 (print) 2291-2436 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this review Colton, G. (1998). Review of [John Beckwith. Music Papers: Articles and Talks by a Canadian Composer, 1961–1994. Ottawa: The Golden Dog Press, 1997. xiii, 256 pp. ISBN 0-919614-72-8 (paperback)]. Canadian University Music Review / Revue de musique des universités canadiennes, 19(1), 86–91. https://doi.org/10.7202/1014609ar All Rights Reserved © Canadian University Music Society / Société de musique This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit des universités canadiennes, 1998 (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ 86 CUMWRMUC John Beckwith. Music Papers: Articles and Talks by a Canadian Composer, 1961-1994. Ottawa: The Golden Dog Press, 1997. xiii, 256 pp. ISBN 0- 919614-72-8 (paperback). Few individuals have influenced the musical affairs of Canada during the past fifty years as profoundly as John Beckwith. As one of Canada's leading composers and a prominent member of the oft-mentioned "first generation" of modern, self-consciously Canadian composers, Beckwith's compositional achievements are well known. Yet not to be overlooked are his remarkable contributions as a pianist, teacher, university administrator, critic, writer, and broadcaster at various times during his illustrious career. From his days as a founding member of the Canadian League of Composers in the early 1950s to his role as founding director of the Institute for Canadian Music at the University of Toronto in the 1980s and beyond, Beckwith remains a central force in Canadian music. 1997 marked the completion of two important recording and publishing projects. The first is a new compact disc of four Beckwith works: Keyboard Practice, Upper Canadian Hymn Preludes, Etudes, and Quartet (CMC Cen- trediscs WRC8-7070). The second is the publication of Music Papers, a compilation of articles and talks by Beckwith from the past thirty years (many of them previously unpublished). Since some of the chapters were written for a professional audience and others for a more general readership, the book has something to offer for both music specialists and those with a general interest in Canadian music. The subject matter ranges widely, with chapters grouped into five broad categories: "A 'Universal Tongue?'"; "CanMus"; "Some Toronto Musicians"; "Composing"; and "Sounds Like..." A "UNIVERSAL TONGUE"? The first two chapters, "Trying to Define Music" (1970) and "Music, the Elusive Art" (1967), outline the author's thoughts on the nature and origins of music. The latter chapter, the more detailed of the two, examines musical gestures which have acquired special meaning within a culture and the concept of referential meaning in modern music (i.e., music which refers to earlier compositions or musical traditions). It is interesting that Beckwith's previously unpublished 1967 article essentially proposes an intertextual theory of music which pre-dates the recent explorations of musical intertextuality by a number of scholars in the 1980s and 1990s.1 In "Music, The Search for Universals" (1978), the author attempts to tackle a longstanding question: What universals, if any, are shared by the various musical cultures of the world? While Beckwith makes some interesting obser• vations on the topic initially, the central thesis soon becomes obscured by a lengthy digression which, at times, reads more like a critique of pop music than a "search for universals." The author, in retrospect, acknowledges that the 1 Among the more recent studies devoted to intertextuality in music are Kevin Korsyn's "Towards a New Poetics of Musical Influence," Music Analysis 10 (1991): 3-72; and Joseph Straus's Remaking the Past: Musical Modernism and the Influence of the Tonal Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). 19/1 (1998) 87 attempt to "fit the 'classical' composer into the world music setting" (p. 18) was not entirely successful. (Each article in the book is contextualised by a newly written prefatory note.) Despite being written in mid-1970s, "A Big Song and Dance" addresses an issue of particular relevance for universities of the 1990s: the place of music in the curriculum. In the process, Beckwith touches on some recurring themes developed elsewhere in the book, such as the distinctiveness of Canadian culture (music, in particular), and the modern composer's constant struggle to assert his/her own creative voice amidst the looming shadows of great musical figures from the past. On this topic, Beckwith concludes with the following colourful observation: "One facet of being a musician is this sense of making comparisons (however absurd) every time you write a new piece, or perform or analyse or study an old one—comparisons with the top achievements of Bach and Mozart and Chopin and Debussy and Mahler, those bastards who are so good they keep you humble" (p. 31).2 CANMUS A series of eight articles on aspects of Canadian music follows. "About Canadian Music: The P.R. Failure" (1969-70) documents the appalling state of international reference sources on Canadian music up to that time. Beckwith offers a critique of sources on Canadian music published since 1944 and, as his detailed commentary illustrates, the few entries on Canadian music which do exist from this period are most often misleading, superficial, and riddled with errors. These themes recur in the sequel article, "A Failure Revisited" ( 1986), and the related essay which follows, "CanMus and World Music" (1994). Toward the end of the latter article, Beckwith concludes a brief overview of historical periods in Canadian music with some perceptive observations on the important topic of national and regional associations in music (both explicit and internalized). Most interesting perhaps is his suggestion that traces of regional or national identity may be detected even in abstract works with no overtly nationalistic intentions: "Is the Quintet of Serge Garant just a replica of the austere post-Webernian lingua franca of the 70s? Personally, I think not. I find it a quite elegant and distinctive expression that bespeaks the composer and his locale" (p. 127). "A Festival of Canadian Music" (1977) offers a personal account of trends in Canadian music history, with a selective sampling of composers. A more in-depth discussion in a similar vein is presented in the recent article "The Canadian Musical Repertoire," based on a lecture given at Mount Allison University in 1992. One of the highlights of the book, this informative essay discusses, among other things, the roots of patriotism in Canadian music, the origins of Beckwith's interest in "Canadiana" and, perhaps most interestingly, the influence of Canadian culture on his own music. 2Beckwith's remarks were made in reference to Picasso's commentary on the art of Delacroix: "That bastard, he's really good!" Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 203. 88 CUMR/RMUC Rounding out Beckwith's discussion of Canadian music are three articles dealing with specialized aspects of the Canadian musical repertoire. In "Notes on CanChorRep" (1985), Beckwith argues for a reconsideration of the scope of the Canadian choral music tradition. While the choral works of Healey Willan are relatively well known, as are (to a certain extent) those of R. Murray Schafer, Harry Somers, Jean Papineau-Couture, Jean Coulthard, and other twentieth-century composers, how many are familiar with the expressive harmonies and intricate melodies of nineteenth-century composer Antoine Dessane? The answer, according to Beckwith, is that we all should be. The achievements of Dessane, and those of his contemporaries James P. Clarke, Ernest Gagnon, and others, provide ample musical evidence to support the author's view that "not all Canadian choral music is new, and ... older items have been unjustly neglected" (p. 61). "Canadian Music in the 1950s: Summary of a Symposium," is precisely what the name implies. Originating as a summarizing talk at the conclusion of a 1983 symposium at the University of Western Ontario on Canadian music of the 1950s, Beckwith's commentary touches on highlights of the symposium, inter• spersed with personal recollections and observations. "Canadian Music of the 1960s and 70s" (1979) offers an assessment of developments in Canadian music between the years 1959 and 1979, followed by an examination of works by five composers active during this period: John Weinzweig, Istvân Anhalt, Harry Somers, Gilles Tremblay, and R. Murray Schafer. The strength of this pre• viously unpublished article lies in its concise summary of important period trends, including increased compositional activity, the development of new- music societies and increased information on Canadian music (due largely to the Canadian Music Centre). The one drawback is the limited scope of the composers selected for discussion. While each of the composers mentioned merits close examination, there are many more names which could be added to this list; for example: Adaskin, Coulthard, Archer, Pentland, and Papineau-Cou• ture—not to mention Beckwith himself. Within its selective focus, however, the article provides an interesting snapshot of an important era in Canadian music.